


One Last Choice

by CasGetYourShotgun



Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Verity Willis, Bittersweet Ending, Brief Thor cameo, Gratuitous Science, Guilt, King Loki-style Loki, Last Days isn't a thing, Magic, Mentions of Lorelei and Sigurd, Not all of it but some of it, Or Secret Wars, Partially inspired by someone's comment on some other fic, Screw Destiny, Stream of Consciousness, Swordfighting, These are not things, Verity Willis: Heartbroken Badass, batman gambit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-16 01:24:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5807881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasGetYourShotgun/pseuds/CasGetYourShotgun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Verity walks away, and Loki burns.<br/>This we know.<br/>But different choices are made in that metaphorical place - and everything changes.<br/>This isn't the story we know.<br/>This isn't the Loki we wanted.<br/>But this is what we have...and it falls to Verity to make it right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Last Choice

_But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?_  
-Mark Twain

************  
Once, Verity Willis might have prayed for Loki. Once, when she was ignorant of his actions before meeting her, when she still believed he could change. But not anymore.

Because she left him. Left him to suffer the visions his future self showed him alone. Left him to realise that he never _could_ change.

Not that there was any reason to, now.

No-one cares whether he changes or not, whether he lives or dies.

So what reason does he have to fight?

He wishes he could speak to her one last time. Apologise, whilst he still felt remorse, before he let that be wiped out.

He hesitates, ready to drop the flaming crown at her call and find some way to fight back, as long as he has something to fight for.

The call never comes.

So he accepts the crown, and accepts his fate.

Part of him still hopes for her call.

***********************  
_Two months later_

It was hard to find someone who could reforge Gram, but somehow Verity had managed it. A weird old guy in Maine probably wasn’t equivalent to its original maker, no matter how much magical knowledge he claimed to have, so she had no idea if it had retained its powers, but at least it was sharp and whole.

After she left Loki - _both_ Lokis, but just thinking about that was giving her a migraine - she’d found his missing horn in the alley and slipped it into her pocket. She came back with a bag for the broken shards of Gram. Someone could hurt themselves if she left the pieces there, and it didn’t seem right to leave such a powerful artifact exposed to the elements. (And objects with the power to reveal the truth, in Verity’s experience, should never be left unguarded, where anyone can get to them. It just creates loneliness and pain and people like her who don’t trust easily and give their everything to the first person to show them what they thought was total honesty.)

She wasn’t quite ready to see or talk to Loki again at the time, but she’d gone out of her way to get the sword repaired anyway, in case he came looking for it.

By now, however, she’d had time to heal, and to think that maybe there could still be hope. After all, the God of Lies couldn’t be anything but honest now, and this future version hadn’t known her from his own timeline. So she’d done some research, and now she thinks she might have a plan. And perhaps she can look past what Loki had done to help him change what he _will_ do.

But there’s no answer when she knocks on the door. It’s still slightly ajar, as though no-one had ever bothered to close it since she left, and the lights are all out.

“Loki?” she calls tentatively.

Nothing.

“Loki?” Louder. More nothing.

She pushes the door fully open, uninvited.

There’s a scorched area of carpet, and a steel chair in the centre, with restraints attached but open. Whoever was in there has long since been released.

There’s a layer of dust over everything, and broken glass on the floor. Various items have been knocked over, and it’s obvious no-one’s been there in a while. For all his faults, Loki would have at least tried to set things to rights, or else create the illusion that all was as it should be. But there’s no deception here for her to see through.

She’d hoped she’d be able to talk to her (former?) friend, and to return the sword and horn, but there’s no chance of that happening today.

Instead she sets to work setting things in order as best she can, in case Loki ever comes back. It’s the least she can do.

************  
She doesn’t finish up until late afternoon.

She pushes Gram and the horn into the back of a drawer back at her apartment, where they’ll be safe but not seen by anyone who stops by (although the only people who ever come over are her mother and, very, very occasionally, Loki), and closes it, resolving not to think about them or her friend until morning. Documentaries and reheated pizza await. 

(If she hadn’t have walked out, a voice in the back of her head taunts her, perhaps she would have spent the evening eating something fancy with a name she couldn’t pronounce whilst listening to some bizarre true story from Loki’s long history. The idea is much more appealing than her reality, but she pushes it from her mind.)

She can’t focus, though. Unable to concentrate on the show - a documentary about engineering she would normally have enjoyed - she finds herself idly channel-surfing.

She stops randomly on a news channel, not paying attention. There’s been some attack by some supervillain in some city and whilst her heart goes out to the victims, seeing her best friend's apartment trashed and abandoned has her so distracted she can’t absorb the specifics.

Until the footage of the attack shows a familiar face and the reporter says a familiar name.

And suddenly she knows why Loki hasn’t been home in a while.

************  
_He’s killed people._

_People are hurt because of him._

_People are dead._

_This isn’t Loki._

_This_ is _Loki._

_But it didn’t have to be._

_And I told him it did._

_And it didn’t._

_It didn’t._

_There was always a choice._

_Always._

_And now…_

_Oh God._

__I _did this._

_I did this to him._

_If I’d have come back sooner this wouldn’t be happening._

_If I’d have_ stayed _this wouldn’t be happening._

_It shouldn’t be happening._

_Maybe I could have stopped it happening._

_I did this._

_I did this._

_I did this._

_I did this._

_Loki..._

_I’m sorry._  
**************  
She stays curled into a ball, hugging her knees and sobbing, for what she feels was probably an hour.  
Her glasses fog up and her throat dries out, and there’s nothing in her head except 

_ohgodohgodi’msosorryi’msosorrylokithisshouldn’tbehappeningi’msosorry_

and it feels like a part of her has been ripped out, a part she didn’t even realise was there until now.

_ididthisididthisi’msorryit’smyfaultit’sallmyfault_

That’s not true, and she knows it. But for the first time she can remember, her sixth sense is silent because all she can hear are the words she wishes she could tell Loki, if he was there and not evil and still willing to listen.

_ididthisit’smyfaultineverwantedthisi’msosorryohgodnoyouhadthechoicelokiyoudidn’thavetobethisyoucouldstillhavechangediknowyoucouldthere’salwaysachoiceishouldhavestayedishouldhavebeenthereiwouldhavehelpedyouwecouldhavefixedthisthere’salwaysachoicethere’salwayshope-_

And suddenly her mind clears.

_There’s always a choice._

_There’s always hope._

She knows what she has to do.

**************  
_I’ll fix this._

She reopens the drawer and places the horn back into her pocket, before pushing Gram as far as it will go (not completely,but deep enough provided it stays roughly diagonal) into her bag. She adds her purse, her toothbrush, a change of clothes and her phone.

And she wants to leave right there and then but Verity Willis reads science and has lived a life governed by facts for her entire life. She knows she can’t have another sleepless night, especially not now, the night before what she’s pretty sure qualified as a Quest of Epic Proportions.

But she dreams of emerald and gold, and her Loki - the version she met at speed-dating all those months ago - metamorphosing into the nightmarish future version who’d broken into his apartment and driven her away by telling her the only thing she’d ever wanted to hear - the truth - and the former condemns her and the latter mocks her, there’s bitter accusations and maniacal laughter, and she’s not sure which belongs to who (maybe it’s both for each), only that she wants it to _stop_ , and she’s burning from the inside out and she can’t speak or move or do _anything_ , and she wakes up in a cold sweat, fingers wrapped tightly around the golden horn and a single phrase echoing in her mind from the last normal moment before everything went to hell -

_I am the crime that will not be forgiven._

**********  
She only has $50, which she knows won’t get her far. She finds a job as a waitress in a café in the next city she reaches.

She spends her nights in motel rooms searching for any leads on Loki. The moment she finds anything (not that there’s much) she ups and leaves, and the cycle repeats. Even if she finds nothing she makes a point of moving on every week. Staying in one place makes her restless.

_I have to find him. I have to fix this._

Some nights she has the same dream of burning and the older Loki who broke the version she once knew, and she wakes up even more determined to _somehow_ make this right, even if she isn’t sure of exactly how. Other nights are dreamless, or replays of memories.

But when she dreams, she always dreams of Loki.

Before Loki, she’d never had any kind of adventure. She rarely even ventured out of her _apartment._ It was a big world, and a world of liars and deception and all those things that Verity, by her very nature, is incompatible with. And now she’s driving across the USA armed with someone else’s sword on a quest to track down a newly unreformed supervillain and hopefully persuade him to _stop_. And there was only one person she would ever do that for.

Loki is one of very few people she cares about and if there’s a chance - however slim it might be - that she can talk him down, that her Loki’s still in there somewhere, then she has to take it.

At the very least it’ll give her the chance to apologise.

************  
It turns out Verity isn’t the only one tracking Loki, because she runs (literally _runs_ ) into Thor in the last place the trickster was allegedly sighted (by a _very_ drunk guy, so she knows it’s more likely to have been a random human than Loki, but it’s the best lead she has and she has to follow the signs).

It’s painful, because the last time they met she was trying to stop him killing her best friend, and now they’re both trying to find him and end his reign of terror before it really has chance to start.

They briefly consider teaming up, but Verity’s plan was always to save Loki from himself. Thor’s? Not so much.

“I have to try,” she says when he scoffs and tells her it will never work. “Loki was my friend.”

“My brother is the God of Lies for a reason. If he ever claimed friendship with you, you must know it was only-”

“It was real, I swear. He can’t lie to me. And the Loki I knew would never-”

“The Loki you knew is as dead as my brother.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It is the truth.”

“It’s _your_ truth. Not mine.”

“There is nothing left of your friend.”

“I’ll believe that when he looks me in the eye, with Gram through his heart, and tells me himself.”

She will not kill him if she has the chance to save him.

It’s a meeting that almost comes to nothing, and it’s very different to their first, when the two of them had sat with Loki and Lorelei and planned to find - but not technically _rescue_ , in the end - Sigurd.

The thought of Lorelei and Sigurd makes her stop for a moment.

Then she asks Thor if he has any idea where they might be.

Then if he’s willing to take her there.

She has a plan.

*********  
Lorelei and Sigurd were imprisoned through magic and metaphor and myth, and if Verity were anyone else things would be very different. Either she’d unpick the threads of the story one by one (as Loki would do) or be so flummoxed by the whole affair as to be entirely useless.

But Verity is herself, and whilst she doesn’t understand metaphor she understands the basic truths of a thing. And she has no magic, but she has physics, and that’s kind of the same thing. Give her a lever and a fulcrum and (theoretically) she could and would move the Earth. (Asgardian isn’t technically Earth, of course, but it’s smaller and floating, so the job would be a lot easier.)

In crafting the punishment, Odin hadn’t planned for science, for the idea that one well-placed random variable might begin a chain reaction to undo what had been done.

Her friend had planned to rescue Lorelei and Sigurd once the inversion was over. He’d never gotten the chance.

If he was here, he might have been a little impressed with her for doing what he never could have.

But he isn’t.

************  
_i’msorryididn'tmeanitpleasestopthisyou'rebetterthanthisiknowitthisismyfaultforgivemeididthisi’msorry_

After three weeks of inactivity Loki is back. Not back with her in Manhattan, of course, but back on the news as they show footage of him doing all those things he’d seemingly tried so hard not to want to do.

She notes the location and rechecks her supplies.

She still has everything she set off with, plus a small capsule Lorelei had given her that would apparently take her wherever she needed to go. She vaguely remembered Loki mentioning it as how she and Sigurd had departed Asgardia’s dungeons.

She cleans off her glasses (mostly fogged up, these days) and leaves the room.

************  
He’s gone by the time she gets there, of course. And there’s no clues as to where he might be now.  
She wishes he’d been apprehended, before remembering that perhaps he would be lost to her if that had happened.

(She ignores the voice in her head telling her he’s _already_ lost to her. It doesn’t resonate as a lie, but she has no way to prove it’s the truth, so either way, she tells herself, it doesn’t count.)

When she checks into yet another room for the night she tries his phone on impulse.

She never finds out if he’d pick up or not, because she loses her nerve and hangs up whilst it’s still ringing.

Her mission involves talking to him. This is not a good sign. She takes a deep breath and steels herself for the future.

************  
_“I’m sorry.”_

_“I know. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”_

He holds her as she cries, stroking her hair. _“It’s okay.”_

She wishes she wasn’t a human lie detector.

Perhaps if she were normal she could delude herself into thinking that she was awake. That this wasn’t a dream.

************  
Four months after leaving Manhattan, Verity comes to a realisation.

If she can’t bring _her_ Loki back, this new version will still have to be stopped. 

But if his future self could break out of the most secure cell in Asgardia, there may only be one, final, last-resort way to do so.

And if anyone has to kill Loki she knows he’d rather it be her.

She knows the burden must, therefore, fall to her.

_i’msosorrylokithisisn’twhatiwanted_

***************  
She’s always one step behind.

The only way to find him is to _think_ like him. Predict his next move.

Except Loki - even _her_ Loki - is unpredictable. And she doesn’t feel she knows this new version at all.

But she has to try.

If she doesn’t get to him before anyone else she’ll lose her chance. Because Verity knows what has to be done. It’s Verity that’s written and rewritten arguments, and created contingency plans, and it’s Verity who really had the chance to know Loki, who could ever know if he really meant what he said. It has to be her that finds him. It has to be her that stops him - saves him or slays him, because there is no third option. Success or failure. Life or death. A Bernoulli trial. Either she wins or they both lose, but if she can’t reach him the fight’s already lost.

So she tries to think herself into someone else’s mind.

To lie to herself in order to find the truth.

It’s a peculiar sensation, and not entirely pleasant.

**************  
They meet again on a Saturday morning, as dawn begins to break. She’s in the same clothes she left Manhattan in, and he’s in the same clothes the future-Loki had worn on that day in his apartment. 

(Despite seeing him in this attire in news footage and blurry YouTube clips, a part of her had still expected to see him dressed the way he had been when they’d first met. She’d imagined this conversation, she realises, as a continuation of their last meeting, or perhaps a rewriting. Perhaps all that image had been was a desire to go back in time to the day she walked out and undo it. But that’s impossible.)

It’s painful seeing him like this, in person but dressed as future-him, eyes crazed and burning. He _looks_ like her Loki, but she feels more like she’s looking at the older version - the _evil_ version - crammed into a younger body, and a skin that no longer quite fits.

For the first time, she wonders if Thor was right, if there really is nothing left of the Loki that had made her dinner and taught her how to believe.

**************  
“I’m sorry.”

She’d run this conversation over in her head so many times, each time trying to work out his reaction. She’d thought of him accepting. She’d thought of him trying to kill her. She ran through relief, anger, betrayal...but she never thought he’d laugh at her.

And it isn’t _her_ Loki's laugh, either. It’s the sort of laugh that one would expect Loki-the-supervillain to have.

But she repeats her statement anyway. “I’m sorry.”

New-Loki ignores her a moment, before regaining his composure and asking “whatever for?”

“For leaving. I...I would have stayed if I’d have known this would happen. I stopped believing in you, but it’s okay; I believe now. And I’ll stay, I promise. I won’t leave again. I’ll help. You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, but Verity,” Loki replies, smirking, “I do.”

“You don’t! You can be better than this!”

“Can I?” He scoffs. “ _Can_ I? Do you know what I am? I am the God of Lies. And as such, I will always be mistrusted, detested-”

“Not by me.” Verity takes another step towards him. “Never by me. Not anymore. You’re not evil, Loki. I know you can change-”

“But why should I? No, the God of Lies is _not_ the God of Evil. Not to begin with. I wanted to _change_ , to be _accepted_. And what happened? I changed. And I was _betrayed_ by my parents and _attacked_ by my brother and _rejected_ by the _one person_ I thought I could depend on. Such is the fate of all Lokis, and all Lokis are changed by it. The God of Lies will always _become_ the God of Evil.”

“Not necessari-”

“This is who I am, Verity Willis! And you know the best part?” Loki throws his arms open theatrically, mockingly. “I _like_ it.”

It sounds true, and Verity’s internal systems register it as such. But for once in her life she decides not just to ignore it, but to override it. To disagree.

“I don’t believe you.” She takes another step. “You still want to change. And maybe you’re right. Maybe this is what’s meant to happen. But I don’t believe in fate.”

“Perhaps you should start.”

Verity removes the horn from her pocket. “The day before I left Manhattan, I went over to your place to return this. I figured it would give me an excuse to talk to you. After I left, I was pretty messed up, but when my head cleared, I remembered how future-you talked to me. Like we’d never met. He insisted you had to become him, that your destiny was fixed, but by knowing me you were _already changing that._ You were _already_ becoming someone new. You’d _stopped_ being Loki, God of Lies. Last time we spoke you couldn’t even _tell_ a lie!”

“Once I accepted my place, that spell was broken.” He looks bored and almost pitying. “And do you really think one mortal woman makes a difference, in the grand scheme of things? You know nothing of fate, Verity Willis.”

“Maybe not, but I know a lot about science. I know it’s possible to predict the outcome of an experiment based on prior experience and the laws of the universe, but you know something? If just _one_ variable is changed, or you introduce a new element, it’s possible to set off a different reaction. It can alter everything.”

“What use is science compared to magic?”

“Maybe nothing. But a tiny mistake in one of the Hubble telescope’s mirrors threw off its focus completely. Chaos theory states that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. I might just be ‘one mortal woman’, but I’m part of a life that’s just different enough from his to change your future. You _can_ change. We can _fix_ this. It’s not too late, and you’re not too far gone. There’s _always_ a choice, Loki. There’s always _hope_. You can talk about _fate_ and _evil_ to your heart’s content, but forgive me when I say that _I don’t believe you.”_

It might seem clichéd to say it, but the world seemed to go silent.

For a moment it seems she’s gotten through to him.

Then he draws his sword, and Verity remembers the _trying to kill her_ thing.

*************  
Loki has magic, and even if he lost Gram he still has Laevateinn.

Verity has a sword that doesn’t actually kill people, which makes it a bit useless in combat.

But the fact that she has a weapon at all is the only thing keeping her alive.

Sigurd had shown her how to wield a sword before they’d parted ways. If he hadn’t, she’d be dead.

If Loki had been good that time in his apartment, he’s even better now.

She doesn’t have a chance.

Overpowered, she falls to her knees. Loki raises his sword to strike one final blow-

-only to stop as Gram, the Sword of Truth, the hero’s blade and Asgard's bane, is driven into his heart.

**********  
_There was no way Verity could take Loki in a fight if he refused to listen to her._

_There was no guarantee he would give her the chance to talk._

_She needed a backup plan._  
…..  
_Loki was the God of Lies. Verity has the Sword of Truth._

_And suddenly the solution seemed so simple._  
…..  
_It might kill him, or it might save him. It might not work at all. But it was the only chance she had. And if anyone could trick the trickster into giving them room to impale him on his own sword, it would be Verity Willis._

_So many times, lies obscure the truth, but at the end of all things the truth is the one thing that can break the lie apart._

**************  
He collapses next to her, screaming. 

And she knows she was right, that he never wanted this, never quite came to terms with what he had to become, because otherwise this wouldn’t have worked. 

She pulls him, shuddering, into her arms as the sword does its work. Sparks emanate from the place where metal meets flesh. 

And Verity has no experience with any of this - with magical weaponry and fate and lying to yourself so completely you forget who you are - but she knows enough about people to know that, deity or not, when your companion is sobbing into your shirt and still shaking, the right thing to do is provide what comfort you can. 

“What have I done?" 

“ _Shhh._ It’s okay. I’ve got you.” She removes the helmet that was never really his, and runs her fingers through Loki’s hair in what she hopes is a soothing manner. “I’ve got you.” 

He still keeps repeating that one phrase - _what have I done?_ \- over and over, and it reminds her too much of her own internal monologue, so she does her best to drown out both of them. 

“I meant everything I said, Loki. I know I walked out but I never gave up on you, not really. I was angry and upset but I never stopped caring about you. I kept the horn all this time. _Shhh_. Breathe. Okay?” She pulls the sword free and doesn’t bother setting it down carefully, instead letting it clatter to the ground. “ _There_. I never wanted to hurt you, not then, not now. I’m _so sorry."_

Now both of them are crying. They’re beginning to draw a small crowd as well, and under the circumstances that might be the worst thing that could happen. 

“Can you stand up?” Verity attempts to help Loki to his feet, but he’s still shaking and there’s no way they’re going to get anywhere with her having to support him. 

Then she remembers Lorelei’s portal. 

***************  
They come out in the last motel room Verity stayed in. 

“It’s okay,” she murmurs again. “I’m here. I’m going to help you.” 

And so she does. She helps him get clean and dry and warm, and holds him through a fresh batch of sobs. She offers him a change of clothes, but they’ll only do for the times Loki assumes her female form, and if Loki doesn’t feel up to shifting - or just won’t or _can’t_ for whatever reason - then anything she has to offer wouldn’t fit, and neither of them have any desire to see him back in the elder’s costume for much longer. So it’s Verity who empties her purse out and checks if Loki is up to casting any kind of illusion (because he’s wanted now, and there’s no way they can leave looking like themselves), and it’s Verity who’s been staying here, so it’s Verity who knows where they can pick up new clothes relatively cheaply. (And if they haven’t got enough money then it’s not like shoplifting is the worst crime committed in the past few months). 

And, after all that, it’s Verity who sits on the motel bed and lets him curl into her arms. 

“You okay?” 

“No,” he replies, voice cracked. “You?” 

“No. But I will be. _We_ will be.” 

They stay like that for a long time - Loki still unsure of himself, Verity rubbing circles into his back and kissing his hairline and trying to provide the comfort she can. 

There’s no going back from here. Loki is back on public radar and now so is she, and they can’t stay in that room forever, and there’s no place for them in Asgardia. But now is not the time for practicalities. For now, there’s just Verity and Loki. 

_“I’ve got you. I won’t leave you, not again. Never again. It’s okay. **I’ll take care of you.** ”_

**Author's Note:**

> Although this fic is a little too short to warrant a playlist, I listened to _How To Save A Life_ by The Fray a lot whilst writing it, and I feel like it's a perfect soundtrack.  
>  Similarly, _Safe_ (Westlife) and _Innocent_ (Taylor Swift) are very much in keeping with the theme (albeit a little corny).  
>  For a Loki POV take, listen to the BBC Live Lounge version of _Better Than Love_ by Hurts.


End file.
